I used to be quite passionate about listening to music, going to concerts, reading music magazines, etc. During the last years, this has become more of a passive interest.
Although I like many genres, I have always been fascinated by complex music, in addition to my more common appreciation for melodic music.
Half of my more and more dusty CD collection consists of progressive instrumental guitar music, mainly belonging to the so-called neo-classical fusion category (i.e. classical music elements mixed into heavy rock), originally pioneered by guitar virtuoso Yngwie J. Malmsteen through his 'Rising Force' album in 1984. Currently, I'm only keeping track of Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, both progressive geniuses in their own right, although Joe probably reaches a wider audience due to his more accessible melody-oriented style.
The other half of my CD collection mainly consists of non-extreme heavy rock from the 80's. After that time period, I became less interested in this genre because of the myriad of emerging crossover variations that did not appeal to me.
By the way, it's been quite a while since I played any of my vinyl records, but I'll probably keep them for nostalgic reasons.
More recently, getting tired of listening to commercial music on the radio while driving to/from work, I tried something completely different: I explored nature sounds (mixed with sparse music). Luckily, I stumbled upon a couple of Dan Gibson's 'Solitudes' recordings, which keep a good balance between the nature sounds and the musical instruments (e.g. 'Island Paradise' and 'Pacific Suite'). Unfortunately, a lot of other CDs in this category either possess too dominant wildlife cries or either put too much emphasis on the musical structure (which in my opinion should only fill some spots in the background).